Thai Thayumanavan

Active and Activatable Polymers for Targeted Protein Degradation

Abstract:

Targeted protein degradation is a new therapeutic modality that has garnered significant recent attention, because degradation of a pathological protein is a more potent strategy compared to the traditional occupancy-based inhibitors. At this nascent stage of the field, most of the current approaches have focused on discovering new pathways for protein degradation and designing small molecule degraders against disease-relevant targets. Polymeric scaffolds have the potential to rather uniquely impact this vibrant field. This presentation will focus on the new frontiers in targeted protein degradation that are uniquely enabled by polymeric materials.  

Speaker: Thai Thayumanavan, University of Massachusetts

S. “Thai” Thayumanavan is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department Head of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the Director of Center for Bioactive Delivery at the Institute for Applied Life Sciences at UMass. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and did a postdoctoral stint at Caltech.  The Thayumanavan lab is interested in translating novel polymer-based molecular assemblies into innovative materials to make a lasting impact in biomedical applications.  

Host: Srini Raghavan

Seminars start at 4:00 pm, and refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm. All seminars are held in the 2136 Physical Sciences Complex (#415) unless otherwise noted.